I don't really go
into a project wanting to make a movie similar to anyone else's. I just go
about doing my own thing & I have a vision in my mind of what the film
is going to be. I'd say that with this project, I just wanted to make an
underground film.

As
you mentioned, this film was born out of the short film Satan's Coming for
You. I made that one last April & afterwards I was out of ideas. I
wasn't sure what direction to go in next, and I was working on a full
length version of my first short film Scumbags: A Day in the Life of
a Drug Dealer but for some reason the idea came to make a full
length feature based off Satan's Coming for You. We started working on it
in September 2015. I had already met Wild Willy Wakefield & Chuck and
they saw Satan's Coming for You and once they found out that I was making
a sequel to it, they wanted to be a part of it. The reason why I chose to
make a film based off of Satan's Coming for You was that I dug the Alister
& Bubba characters & their story. I also felt we could build off
them and their characters better with a full length film then we did with
a short film.

Do talk about your movie's approach to
violence for a bit?

I don't think the movie is very violent
- I mean it has a little blood here and there - the amount of violence
that wouldn't bother any horror fan ... but there are some animal death
scenes (that are fake) that I know some people will find offensive.

Well
the original camera I used on Satan's Coming for You got broken and I was
already messing with the VHS for a different project. I have an HD camera,
but there was no way I was going to use it for My
Master Satan. I wanted My
Master Satan be the kind of movie people watch & say "this
movie feels like it was made in the late 80's or early 90's." I was
going thru a phase watching the movie Black Devil Doll from Hell at the
time - it's a shot on VHS film, and it inspired me shoot a film on VHS

I
already have my own style of filmmaking that's gritty & scumbaggy
feeling, so in my opinion the VHS quality amplified it tenfold. If you
watch the film, you will notice that there aren't really any signs or
references to modern technology except for the peeping scenes where the
characters are using cellphones to take pictures. But besides that, there
aren't really any signs of modern technology.

You
also play one of the leads in My
Master Satan: 3 Tales of Drug Fueled Violence - now what can you
tell us about your character, what did you draw upon to bring Alister to
life, and did you write him with yourself in mind from the get-go? And why
is he talking in a distorted voice, actually?

I wanted the
Alister character to be a weird sadistic serial killer/thug. I wanted him
to be an unlikable character that the viewer would hope would die or get
killed off or get what they deserve at the end of the film - but doesn't.
And yes, I wrote the character with me in mind to play him because
at the time the only other person I knew who acted was Matt & he was
playing the Bubba character. I wanted the viewer to know that Alister was
a bad person, that's why when he is first shown, the viewer sees him put
the dog in the bag and beat the bag on the ground several times, but I
didn't want him to be an over the top character like Woody.

To play him, I
just acted natural & laid back for most of the scenes & then for
the scenes that were violent like the dog in the bag scene, or the murder
scenes, or scenes where he was mad I just had to find something in my mind
that made me mad and bring out the rage.

What can you tell us about the rest of your cast, and why
exactly these people?

Dealin
Dick is actually my father helping out being in the movie - I made the
character specifically for him. He is always in and helps with my movies.
There's Matt as Bubba, I've been making movies with him the longest
(besides my father), we are friends & he's a Denver native. I can't
imagine anyone better to play Bubba than him. He had some acting
experience prior to our film, he was in a few plays before. There's
Brian, he plays Charlie. He's a friend of mine too, and I asked him to be
a part of it because I thought that he looked the part for our movie. He
had no prior acting experience. I wrote the Charlie character with him in
mind to play him and I designed his character kind of as Alister's protegé. Brian is from New York too, unlike the rest of the cast in
the film who are Denver natives. There's Wild Willy & Chuck. They knew
each other and then met me & wanted to be a part of the movie - they
had no acting experience prior to this film as well, but they are really
great actors and were very enthusiastic. I made up their characters
specifically for them to play. I think that no one else could have played
Woody like Wild Willy did. That's why when I created the Woody character,
I just used the vibes that I got from Wild Willy as inspiration for a
character.

Do
talk about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere!

The way we make
movies and the on-set atmosphere is unique, & weird sometimes - &
it's what really distinguishes us from other independent filmmakers.
Sometimes we will be meticulously planning a scene & discussing how
it's going to go down, or there are sometimes I will just break out the
video camera & say "Action" & we do a scene in one take.
Sometimes theres people on set that aren't even in the movie. Like the
scene where Alister & Bubba break into an abandoned unit in an
apartment building to stay the night & Chuck finds them &
confronts them & gets killed. I remember for that scene that Wild
Willy came to watch us shoot the scene and brought like 3 or 4 other
guys with him that weren't in the movie. Other times we would go into
public places and start shooting like for the concert scene, or when Bubba
& Alister go to the restaurant/arcade. This film was essentially
guerrilla filmmaking.

I also
remember another time on set when we did the scene where Woody dies of
auto-erotic asphyxiation that everyone - especially me - almost died from
laughter.

It's
been mixed like it always is when we release a film. We have a lot of
people that like it & then we have people that don't like what we're
doing. I kind of already knew some people wouldn't dig it because of
the VHS quality, because of the animal scenes, etc. etc. But I truly
believe if a viewer can go in with a mindset that this film is not a
Hollywood film & that it doesn't have a huge budget that they can
enjoy it. The movie is enjoyable film & I think if a viewer
can't be entertained by it, then they just don't get it.

But
I've got to say that before we released the film, we took a 15
minute preview of it to three different open screen nights here in Denver.
Audience reaction would be depend on what kind of audience it was. So if
it was an art house crowd, they wouldn't dig it very much - probably just
dismiss it as trash. But if the crowds were just normal everyday people,
they loved it.

Any
future projects you'd like to share?

Yea, I'm in the
preliminary stages of a my next movie called American Scumbags, it's a
full length film based on my first short film called Scumbags: A Day in
the Life of a Drug Dealer. It's gonna have more gore & violence and be
shot with an HD camera. I am hoping to release it before the end of this
year. I would also like to release two full length films in 2017.

What got you into
filmmaking to begin with, and did you receive any formal training on the
subject?

I
got into filmmaking as a child because I loved movies and wanted to make
movies & be in them. I started making movies on a beat up old
camcorder in the sandbox & evolved as I got older.

I
decided to make my first short film when I was 18, I met Matt shortly
afterwards and we made Scumbags: A Day in the Life of a Drug Dealer. It
got pretty far, we got to play it at the Oriental Theater in Denver, and
for like three months, a TV station here in Denver played it on their
local station. We made Satan's Coming for You afterwards and now we have
our first full length feature My Master Satan: 3
Tales of Drug Fueled Violence.

How would you
describe yourself as a director?

Laid back, practical &
unpretentious. I am easy to get along with and open to everybody else's
opinions too.

Filmmakers who inspire
you?

Where do I start? As a child, the 1933 King Kong made
me want to make movies, so I'd have to say Merian C. Cooper & Ernest
Shoedshack. All the original Godzilla films made me want to make movies,
but as I got older Lucio Fulci [Lucio
Fulci bio - click here], his gore & zombies are incredible &
I feel that all the modern zombie movies out there today have nothing on
him or his zombies. Jose Mojica Marins, I'm a Coffin Joe fan & I feel
that he may be one of the most underrated directors of all time. Mario
Bava [Mario Bava bio - click
here], I like his work a lot & he is an artist, I just don't see myself
doing anything stylistically similar to his work in the future. Jörg
Buttgereit and his Nekromantik films. He's another big influence on
me, I
really like his movies. He is an artist. Even Sam Raimi because of the
first Evil Dead film. I also like Bob
Clark & Allen Ormsby, the guys
behind Black Christmas,
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead
Things, Deranged,
Deathdream. Joe D'Amato [Joe
D'Amato bio - cllick here] because of his film Beyond the
Darkness.
Frank Henenlotter. There are several filmmakers that inspire me.

Anything else you're
dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask?

No,
but I've got to say that pretty soon we will be having a big premiere of My Master
Satan sometime this summer at a theater in Denver. We will
be headlining the show and we will have a couple other filmmakers who will
get to play their movies before ours. I also would like to take this
opportunity to say that me & my company (R.A. Productions) will be
making more features. We will continue to make movies & we will keep
getting better & better with each film we make. Thanks again for this
interview and to all our supporters out there. I'd also like to give a
thanks to Darren of Luciferian Insectus for giving us the music to My Master
Satan...